Freeview HD Recording Issues (1 Viewer)

[BioEgo]

Ok, took me a while but I did some tests with other programs and had a few curious results.

- DVBViewer Terratec Edition: being an OEM version only detects the Cinergy tuner and not the PCTV. Tuning ok, live TV ok, recording seems ok but it always started live TV when recording so not meaningful. Uninstalled.

- NextPVR: detects both tuners, but is unable to tune with Cinergy (probably due to the same reason that requires me to use the DVB-T provider in TVE3 instead of the Generic one with this tuner). Didn't feel like exploring it too much, uninstalled.

- DVBLink: find and tunes with both cards. Live TV and recording is fine with both of them, no discontinuities reported in the diagnostics. Set service to manual, still installed. (not considering it an option though since it's not free and for the same amount of money I can buy another tuner to use with MP!)

- MP2.1.1: unable to find the Cinergy DVB-T tuner, had to use the modified TVLibrary.dll. After that it finds and tunes with both cards. The Cinergy is working fine, no discontinuities in LiveTV/Timeshifting and even when recording alone. Unfortunately the PCTV has lots of discontinuities even in LiveTV/Timeshifting, both within MP and in manual control from SetupTV [EDIT: see post #25, PCTV issue fixed by changing USB port]. Service set to manual start, still installed.

After those tests I decided to revert to MP1.18 and check whether using an IPTV source for LiveTV/Timeshifting would help. The results left me a bit confused....
If I start watching something using the IPTV source recording with the Cinergy works fine even when stopping the IPTV live show. Tried disabling the IPTV source and I was back to the usual situation, re-enabled the IPTV source, tried to start the IPTV live show and got an "Unknown error" instead, but still the Cinergy started recording fine regardless of LiveTV/Timeshifting status. Made a few more tests and I can confirm that regardless of the fact that the IPTV successfully connects to the live stream it fixes the issues with the Cinergy. If I do not try to start the IPTV channel the recording issues are back as usual.

This led me to start thinking about the possibility to set up a workaround: I just need to make it so that every time I start recording with the Cinergy I also start timeshifting with the same card (similar to what manual control in SetupTV does) or try to connect to an IPTV stream (even failing). Do you think something like that is technically possible with a plugin or using some external program? Not asking you to do that, but if it can be done I'll start looking into that myself and see what I can get. It's a bit hacky but if it works....why not?

 

[mm1352000]

It's a bit hacky but if it works....why not?

...because I actually want to find and resolve the cause of the problem!

Here's the thing. From the tuner's perspective, recording and timeshifting is 100% the same. Therefore if there are discontinuities only when recording, by logic the reason should have nothing to do with the tuner. Something is not right here. Maybe I'm missing something.

[edit: In other words, to be clear I'm saying that attempting a workaround is more than just unsatisfying. Because the problem is not understood, there's every chance that a workaround would only move/change the symptoms.]

I just went back to take a look at your "dualrecording.txt" log. In that log you seem to have the Cinergy tuner recording to D:\Recordings\ and the Pinnacle tuner recording to E:\Recordings\. Is that your normal arrangement? If yes:

1. Please list all the drives connected to this PC, particularly:
   1. type - HDD or SSD
   2. connection - SATA, M.2, USB, network etc.
   3. HDD spindle speed - green/5400 vs standard/7200 rpm
2. What happens if you try the reversed test again (ie. Cinergy does the timeshifting and Pinnacle does the recording) and have the Pinnacle record to D: and the Cinergy record to E: ?

 

[BioEgo]

...because I actually want to find and resolve the cause of the problem!

Seems good enough reason to me, so let's go!

Here are units details (both HDD):

Unit D: Wester Digital 3TB Caviar Green model WD30EZRX, 3.5" internal unit, connected to SATA3 port. Didn't find details on spindle speed since it claims to be managed by "Intellipower" tecnology, but some sites report 5400rpm

Unit E: Fujitsu 120Gb model mhy2120bh, 2.5" internal unit, connected to SATA3 port, spindle speed 5400rpm

Switching the recording folder (PCTV on D and Cinergy on E) doesn't change anything (run usual tests, got same results). Also Timeshift folder is on E: (and has always been there during this whole time). When I first noticed the recording issue both cards where recording on E, I tried to move one on another disk to see if it was some kind of issue with the disk not being fast enough to manage two recordings at the same time.

EDIT: to be more clear, by "same results" I mean that PCTV is recording fine regardless of timeshifting/LiveTV being on, while Cinergy has lots of discontinuities in recordings unless there is one tuner timeshifting/using LiveTV, be it the Cinergy itself or the PCTV

Hope this helps!

 

[mm1352000]

Interesting.

Neither of those drives are going to set the world on fire... but I still would have thought they'd be usable.

I note a couple of things:

• the Fujitsu drive may be connected to a SATA 3 port, but it only has a SATA 1 interface
• the SATA 3 ports on the system's motherboard come from an additional ASMedia controller (wonder if the SATA 2 ports might show a difference considering that they come directly from the chipset, probably won't have so much bandwidth competition, and should have better integration/drivers)

You didn't mention the SSD (c: ). How is that connected?
I also should have also asked: how full is each drive, and are they likely to be highly fragmented (ie. when did you last format or defrag them)?

 

[BioEgo]

Ok I was re-reading my previous post and I noticed I made a mistake: unit D is on SATA2, while the other SATA3 port goes to the SSD (Samsung EVO840 128Gb)

Disk capacity is as follows:
- C (SSD): 44.4Gb available out of 99.1Gb (used for OS & Programs only)
- D (HDD): 1.65Tb available out of 2.72Tb (used for Media storage)
- E (HDD): 74.6Gb available out of 111Gb (used for Timeshifting & Recordings only)

All units report 0% fragmentation.

Really I do not think that it's something with the disks, we already seen that this happens even when using the SSD for recording. Also DVBLogic and MP2 seem to manage fine with the recordings on the Cinergy (using disk E for both tuners). Also: while doing the latest batch of tests at some point the PCTV tuner started having lots of discontinuities even during Live TV whatching. I tried to restart TVService, reboot PC but to no avail. The thing that fixed it was disconnecting and connecting to a different USB port (forcing Windows to refresh the drivers). Since then I also tried re-running MP2's TVSetup and now even the PCTV works. So it seems that in MP2 both tuners are working as expected. I was under the impression that TVE3 was the same in both MP1 and MP2, but maybe there's some little difference that might be helping identify the issue at hand.

(for completeness sake I tried also changing the USB port of the Cinergy to see if it changed something, but no still the same issues on recording).

(P.S: ok it seems that switching to MP2 might be the answer, but I don't really want to....it just doesn't feel the same, I have issues finding things and will be missing a couple of plugins I heavily use, not mentioning all the WAF points I'll loose unless I'm able to make the transition totally seamless....maybe it's just me but if we manage to fix this with MP1 it would be better)

 

[BioEgo]

Quick update: tried both cards on my laptop with a fresh reinstall of MP1.18 and both work fine (did the usual tests as per my previous posts, no discontinuities where detected). I'm still convinced that this is not an hardware issue on my HTPC since MP2 and other programs are working just fine. The results with the laptop suggest that maybe a fresh reinstall might be a solution. Will try that as soon as I can and update here accordingly (might take a while but I'll do it).